Vance Packard and American Social Criticism

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Univ of North Carolina Press, 9 de nov. 2000 - 400 pàgines
Vance Packard's bestselling books--Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), and Waste Makers (1960)--taught the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s about the dangers posed by advertising, social climbing, and planned obsolescence. Like Betty Friedan and William H. Whyte, Jr., Packard (1914- ) was a journalist who played an important role in the nation's transition from the largely complacent 1950s to the tumultuous 1960s. He was also one of the first social critics to benefit from and foster the newly energized social and political consciousness of this period. Based in part on interviews with Packard, Daniel Horowitz's intellectual biography focuses on the period during which Packard left magazine writing to author his most famous works of social criticism. Horowitz traces the influence of Packard's education and early years in rural Pennsylvania, providing a deeper understanding of his thought and his later books. Packard's life, Horowitz contends, illuminates the dilemmas of a freelance social critic without inherited wealth or academic affiliation. His career also expands our understanding of how one era shaped the next, underscoring how the adversarial 1960s drew on the mass culture of the previous decade.

Originally published in 1994.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

 

Continguts

Introduction
1
From Granville Summit to State College 19141932
10
Penn State 19321936
24
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Boston Daily Record and Associated Press 19361942
42
Darien New Canaan and American Magazine 19421956
59
American Magazine 19421956
78
Three Bestsellers 19571960
102
The Emergence of an American Social Critic
132
The Response of Critics to the Trilogy
179
Moralism and Its Contradictions
206
The Pyramid Climbers The Naked Society and The Sexual Wilderness
223
A Nation of Strangers The People Shapers and Our Endangered Children
244
The Ultra Rich
272
Notes
283
Bibliography
337
Index
361

Readers Respond to The Hidden Persuaders The Status Seekers and The Waste Makers
158

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Sobre l'autor (2000)

Daniel Horowitz, professor of American studies and history at Smith College, is author of The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940.

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